The way architecture influences thinking is really fascinating to think about.
Peter Watts’ universe features vampires that get grand mal brain seizures when they perceive crosses (that is, intersecting lines at roughly right angles). The idea is that large right angles very rarely occur in nature, so vampires were able to flourish in antiquity, but as human architecture began wrapping civilization in boxes with walls, windows, roofs, etc, vampires would naturally stay away from cities and population centers, explaining their rarity.
In the story of course, humans developed drugs that inhibit that part of the vampiric visual cortex so we could subjugate them for study and free labor, but vampires are quite smart, so things predictably go off the rails…
“Echopraxia” by Peter Watts draws this idea further if you’re curious.
Peter Watts’ universe features vampires that get grand mal brain seizures when they perceive crosses (that is, intersecting lines at roughly right angles). The idea is that large right angles very rarely occur in nature, so vampires were able to flourish in antiquity, but as human architecture began wrapping civilization in boxes with walls, windows, roofs, etc, vampires would naturally stay away from cities and population centers, explaining their rarity.
In the story of course, humans developed drugs that inhibit that part of the vampiric visual cortex so we could subjugate them for study and free labor, but vampires are quite smart, so things predictably go off the rails…
“Echopraxia” by Peter Watts draws this idea further if you’re curious.